Chuck Close on the value of experiencing another person's art

"It seems to me now, with greater reflection, that the value of
experiencing another person’s art is not merely the work itself, but the
opportunity it presents to connect with the interior impulse of
another. The arts occupy a vanishing space in modern life: They offer
one of the last lingering places to seek out empathy for its own sake,
and to the extent that an artist’s work is frustrating or difficult or
awful, you could say this allows greater opportunity to try to meet it. I
am not saying there is no room for discriminating taste and judgment,
just that there is also, I think, this other portal through which to
experience creative work and to access a different kind of beauty, which
might be called communion."

"It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc...The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written... I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive."Excerpt from Mary Oliver's essay Of Power And Time